Enrico Foschi’s official blog

Few days ago, when trying out Google Street View in my hometown, I discovered that my mom was caught by Google cameras:

As first impression, it was really funny. Then, I realized that this wouldn’t be great when thinking about privacy. Not a big deal, as well as anybody can just drive in that street and see same or more things, but still is a kind of strange to know that those images now are available worldwide.

Well, I’m here since last September and probably a tourist that has been here has visited more Ireland than me. So I decided to start, every week-end, to go somewhere. Here some of the previouses places I was (try to guess where):

Finally I’ve time to post something on my new blog.

Well, beginning with St. Patrick’s day. The parade was amazing, I liked it a lot. 2 hours and half of standing up between thousands of people, but it worth it definitevely.

Here are some photos:

Sadly, this week is my last one in Ammado Internet Services ltd., in the office of Pearse Street in Dublin.

I’ll miss this company so much!

I think Ammado worth the price of one of the best company to work for. I’ve worked for 5 different companies and I thought it could be very difficult to find one that I could enjoy more than RMG Connect S.r.l. in Italy. But this is.

I’ve never found a such enjoyable working time like in here, bosses and managers that look at your values instead of your preseenteism. I had a wonderful time with my colleagues. Apart from being funny and happy, it is also a wonderful learning place because of the high skill-sets of every employee.

If I could go back in the past, I would have applied for Ammado again. And I hope to collaborate with them again.

Unluckily, I’m leaving just few months before it will explode: in a few months time, you will hear about Ammado.com through different media and it will become the reference point for the ethical web.

This will be the results of a wonderful management, a strong organization and of the devotion of any single employee, that can see the results of his own effort in a so largely spread community.

Thank you, Ammado. In particular, many thanks to:

- Sean: the Agile man (or better, Scrum master). He was my manager. Well focused on technical and organizational issues and always able to manage the organization. Never lost his temper even in the toughest scenarios. Always available to help every single employee in trouble and never blaming anybody. Anyway, he promised I could listen to his wife playing jazz-piano (she should be a very very good player), but I’m still waiting….

- Peter Conlon, the founder and financer of the project. It was AWESOME to see a billion-dollar-man working hardly with us in the office, as he is one of us. He’s not just financing the project, he’s giving all himself to it, like his colleagues Anna, Joe and Column.

- Peter, Ian, Veljko, Keith, Alexey, Dennis, Karl, Octavian, Paul, Slobodan, Philip for their patience, their advices, their supports and their teaching (and their good fellowship)

- Claudiu,Damien, Declan and Monique (BA) for their strong work on organizing features, validating them and their support with the DEV team

- The biz team, for their effort of spreading Ammado culture all over the world

- The IT team, including Charlie, Kevin, Vladim, for their quick support on networking, on cable renting (:p) and anyother stuff office or not office related

- Daniel, probably the smartest guy in the office, for giving me a little understanding of an unusual humor

- Faran, Diarmuid, Mariano, Cormac, Jonathan, Billy, Mark, Damien, Claudiu, Maylon, Catherine, Branislav, Brendan, Fedor, Fili, Frank, James, Miroslav, Paschal, Viktoria, Vladimir, Yahuen, Michal, Andrew, Simon, Larry and all the others: was a pleasure to work with you.

www.ammado.com

We are starting to look for St. Patrick’s day!!!

We will enjoy the daily shows in Dublin with clover tatoo, green hairs and rivers of St. Patrick’s beer!!!!

Here is my girlfriend and my cat (Seppia), both looking forward to it:

Here I am so proud of my last creation: a veggie double cheesburger made with organic vegetable burgers, soya cheese (no, it’s not tofu, it’s cheese 100% tasting like Philadelphia’s one).

Yes, you understood right: no animal products inside (neither eggs or milk derivates).

Me and Stefania ate two of these each on last friday night, with onion rings and chips! Well, even if most of the food was organic, maybe it’s not so healthy….

<– click to view the full-size photo

When I was walking back to home yesterday evening, I thought about Artificial Intelligence and how it is going to develop.

Well, we are going nearer and nearer in these latest years.

What do I think it is? It will START (the development will be decided year by year) as something that will be able to associate ideas, concepts and connect them, as well as recognize them.

It will begin like something like a just born baby. Able to learn, but without any knowledge.

At the present, this is very possible, as well as the Knowledge, is the one that now we have on Internet, in community and applications like Wikipedia, the biggest Encyclopedia of the world.

EG: An AI enabled software can be able to connect automatically photos from flickr and getting informations about them connecting their tags with wikipedia knowledge in “some kind of smart way” (that could be implemented in millions line alghoritms).

Again, an AI software can recognize a photo comparing it with all the ones it has on the db (just checking average colours on a grid based shape) and connect the input photo with the information taken by the compared ones.

So, imagine now what about 3d models. When 3D scanners will be as advanced as to recognize 3d models “on the streets”, they can be able to compare them with some kind of database of 3d model and identify the 3D area around them. At this point, a “robot” will be able to recognize everything around it and connect everything to its database informations, just like a baby see an apple and think “an apple, juicy, sweety apple”.

Here I am, in my first post, of this blog created just after having signed a contract for working in Microsoft in Dublin!

So glad to be on board of the best company I was dreaming for and to have a chance to give all the best of myself.

As I thought, in the first interview, Microsoft demonstrated to filter heavily the candidates by difficoult theorical questions and complex alghoritm coding problems. As I thought and as I had a chance to talk with few of them, I’ll be working on a place full of geniuses!

Well, I come from a place full of geniuses, Ammado Internet Services Ltd. I am currently working for them now and I’ll end on 14th of March, ready to join Microsoft on tuesday 18th.

We are working on www.ammado.com, a wonderful community that in few months is gonna exploding and is gonna change the world!!! Oh my God! I wish them all the best luck!!!

I’ll be very sad to leave, I’ve such a wonderful relationship with my colleagues and company members that I think I’ll cry the very last day.

Anyway, I’ll start a very strong career in Microsoft and I wonder where I’ll be in few years time!!!